In present day point-of-sale (POS) operations, the MICR indicia that are to appear on the check of a customer are added after the sale, and at a remote location (i.e., either at the bank, or in a separate, back room, retail site).
For the first time, this invention seeks to eliminate the post-operative role of supplying the required MICR indicia on a check presented for POS payment at a retail establishment. Owing to its new function, transaction printers now being designed by the present assignee of this invention, must be able to encode and read MICR located in a specific field (i.e., the amount field) of the check at the point-of-sale.
In a MICR encoder of the new machine, the MICR characters must be printed at a precise distance to the right edge of the check in order to place the MICR in the proper field site. In order to accomplish this, an optical sensor is provided to detect the edge of the check and stage it at a known location from the thermal, MICR print head. It then becomes an easy matter to advance the check by a stepper, drive and print motor a fixed number of step increments in order to start the printing sequence.
In addition, it is essential that the encoded MICR characters be verified after printing to assure their accuracy. The MICR indicia imprinted upon each check extend to each edge on the left and right of the check to within 0.31 inches. By adding an additional (second) read head, the movement of the check is minimized and the check feeding mechanism may be greatly simplified.